How shifting your perspective and your energy can radically transform life for your child with autis

(Energy worker and mother Miki Ettore speaks about the shifting of energies that she believes happens in Intensive Interaction and how this has helped her son and can help others on the spectrum)

I was lucky to discover Intensive Interaction early on in my journey with Autism. Finley was around 4 years old (he is now 10) when I was first introduced to it through his mainstream school.

At the time Fin was completely in his own world having regressed into severe Autism at 18 months. I was at a loss for how to reach him as he didn’t want to interact with me at all and preferred to sit lining up his pens or stimming repetitively for hours in the corner of the room.

I tried ABA at first but it just didn’t work for Fin. He would get very agitated and upset and I felt it was driving him even further away. I just didn’t feel that making him conform to our world when he was so unwell and anxious was the right way to go about connecting with him and preferred the concept of mirroring and entering into his world to show him that there was no judgement of what he needed to do in order to feel feel safe and comfortable.

As an energy worker for many years now I have observed that although it might not seem that way, children on the spectrum have a very clear sense of what is going on around them. They live in a much higher vibration than we do and they are very sensitive to people’s energies and attitudes towards them. They pick up on everything including our discomfort and judgement of the things which we find odd or not in line with how the world expects them to behave. Sometimes their behaviours escalate even more when we judge or try to squash them.

In my opinion the best way we can sync with a highly sensitive and intuitive child is to rise to their vibration and join in with what makes them feel comfortable. Even the slightest shift to match their energy will lead to magical results. This is something that I think Intensive Interaction achieves very effectively.

In order to reach our children I believe we need to really observe what makes them tick. We need to reach into our own intuition, imagination and sense of fun to bond with our child. We need to feel what the child is feeling and match what they are focusing on. We need to become observers of our children. Watch them and identify ways to join them, mirror them and respond to them. The exchange of body movements, facial expressions and active presence leads to games, activities and conversations which can create a strong bond and connection with our distant or non verbal children. By matching we are not imitating but creating interactions which they feel safe and comfortable with.

Explore their world. Use imagination to get closer. Our children appreciate it when we take time to dive into their world and understand why they are behaving in a certain way. By shifting our own energy and perspective to match theirs we can strengthen the bond that exists already with our child. A bond that perhaps we have forgotten because they seem so lost in their own world.

By visualising and creating an energetic bridge we can gain their trust and slowly begin to show them that the people around them are on their wave length. That they find what they are doing fun and therefore are fun to play and interact with.

I believe that our special children come into our lives to teach us. Finley has taught me how to connect at a much deeper level than speech. To connect at a level where he feels respected and heard; where he feels un-judged and unconditionally loved.

Some parents are very concerned that their child is not reaching academic milestones so they focus primarily on this area however I have always felt that social interaction and forming relationships with people is more important during the early stages of recovery. Personally I felt it was important for Finley to want to interact and socialise with people and to feel comfortable and happy joining in with social activities. He is still way behind academically but I feel that will come in time. Social skills are much harder for children on the spectrum to pick up and in my opinion that is where an intervention such as Intensive Interaction can completely transform a child with social and communication difficulties and produce miraculous results.

Miki Ettore practises from 'Health in the City', in Moorgate London. She also does home visits in London for special needs children who are not able to travel to the clinic. Her website is www.mikiettorehealing.com. You can reach her on her mobile at 07813147424 or you can send her a message via this website and I will make sure it gets to her!